According to the Eurostat report, Serbia was the best country in terms of economic growth rate in the first quarter of 2020, but the editor-in-chief of the weekly NIN, Milan Ćulibrk, points out that these figures mean nothing to Serbian citizens, and that few people know that last year, for example, South Sudan recorded the highest GDP growth in the world.
The expert revealed that the previous Top 10 countries (in terms of GDP growth) also included countries such as Tajikistan and Burundi, where, as he pointed out, are not that desirable to live in.
According to Eurostat, the Serbian economy grew by 5% in the first three months of this year but Culibrk estimates that this is a consequence of the country’s poor economic structure and nothing else.
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“This year, due to the pandemic-induced crisis, we will have a recession, and the only question is whether the decline will be around 3%, as estimated by the IMF and the Fiscal Council, or even bigger if the health situation worsens,” Ćulibrk adds.
He a recalls that the Smederevo steelworks have already closed a blast furnace and that the company, together with Fiat in Kragujevac, which also works at reduced capacity, is the largest exporter from Serbia, so it is already clear that we can expect a significant drop in GDP.
Serbia also exports two-thirds of its products to the EU countries, some of which will have a 10% drop in the economy this year.
“Our government is trying to convince us that there will be no problems, while it would be easier for everyone to tell us openly that there will be problems, it will not be easy to solve them (…) and that there is an optimistic and pessimistic scenario. In our country, everything boils down to unfounded optimism,” concluded the editor-in-chief of NIN weekly.
(Danas, 21.07.2020)
https://www.danas.rs/ekonomija/culibrk-najveci-rast-ne-znaci-nista/
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